Thumbnail of the 9/14/17 newsletter (full issue here) Action of the week: Let’s disrupt DeVos’s “Rethinking Schools” scheme: 1. Send a letter to the editor 2. Learn more about Pay for Success and social impact bonds. Try Alison McDowell’s blog here. 3. Share this article about how DeVos undermined MIchigan schools, by PAA Board member Steven Norton, executive director of Michigan Parents for Schools. Tweet of the week: @BetsyDeVosED (re)thinking people reject your rhetoric, NO to Pay for Success NO to … →

Thumbnail of the 9/6/17 newsletter (full issue here) Action of the week: Share survey results with Congress. Tweet of the week: Welcome Congress back with this message – Listen to parents! Fund our public schools, no $$$ for charters, vouchers https://shar.es/1SQN9V

Thumbnail of the 8/31/17 newsletter (full issue here) Action of the week: Help for Houston Tweet of the week: A terrible teachable moment on climate change https://tinyurl.com/ybo4wf2n #HelpforHouston PAA News: Don’t miss Public School Shakedown’s back-to-school special. PAA President Dora Taylor is a “Progressive Education Fellow” for The Progressive magazine which features her most recent article, “Voucher Vocabulary: A Guide to School Voucher Programs by Any Other Name.” PAA founding member Pamela Grundy has just published “Color and Character: West … →

Thumbnail of the 8/16/17 newsletter (full issue here) Action of the week: Get inspired by Helen Gym: An audio recording of the full teleconference is here, and a blog summary of the discussion is here. Tweet of the week: Get inspired by Helen Gym! PAA Week Day 3 discussion of politics & schools will get you fired up for the work ahead! https://tinyurl.com/y75eza2n PAA News: Last day of PAA Week, internal strategy session. Also, reaching out to survey contest winners

Thumbnail of the 8/9/17 newsletter (full issue here) Action of the week: Get ready for PAA Week! Tweet of the week: Join Parents Across America for a week of action and discussion Aug. 14-17 #PAAWeek http://parentsacrossamerica.org/join-us-during-paa-week/ PAA News: We are very pleased to announce the unanimous election of Zerlina Smith from Chicago and Laura Bowman from Virginia and re-election of Khem Irby to the PAA Board of Directors. We look forward to a dynamic year under their leadership! Great thanks … →

Thumbnail of 7/31/17 issue (full newsletter here) Action of the week: Final day for PAA survey PAA News: Laura Bowman, leader of PAA-Roanoke Valley, came across this good Slate article from January 2017, “Are Young Kids Doing Too Much Homework.” It quotes Laura at length and references PAA’s parent organizing toolkit.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a short stealth tour of a handful of states this week with a demand that we all “rethink schools.” She gave Wyoming school officials less than a day to prepare for her visit, but 30 activists were motivated enough to turn out to protest her bad ideas. PAA’s interim executive director Julie Woestehoff, who lives in Wyoming (though on the other side of the state where DeVos visited), sent this letter to the main state-wide … →

Please read and share this message from PAA Board member Steven Norton, executive director of Michigan Parents for Schools, who wrote… t I wanted to make sure parent activists from all over saw this article: “Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools. Its Children Lost.” New York Times Magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html To understand what Betsy DeVos brings with her to Washington, you need to understand the fight we’ve been having in Michigan over school “choice” developed explicitly to cause local public schools to … →